Tattoo You
by Hunsdon
Summary: "She tells him the story because one thing has become clearer than ever since the storm: When it comes to her—to the story of her—Richard Castle doesn't take no for an answer." A one-shot set not too long post-After the Storm (5 x 01).


Title: Tattoo You

Rating: T

WC: ~2700

Summary: "She tells him the story because one thing has become clearer than ever since the storm: When it comes to her—to the story of her—Richard Castle doesn't take no for an answer." A one-shot set not too long post-After the Storm (5 x 01).

A/N: The one-millionth "Castle finds Beckett's tattoo" story. I have no excuse for myself.

* * *

><p>She tells him the story between breaths. Between gasps and moans and pleas.<p>

She tells him the story while his teeth mark the perimeter with a dotted line. Delicate and not-so-delicate nips when she's less than forthcoming.

She tells him the story because one thing has become clearer than ever since the storm: When it comes to her—to the story of her—Richard Castle doesn't take no for an answer.

* * *

><p>"How did I miss it?"<p>

"What?" Her eyes blink open. It's an effort, in love with this particular darkness as she is. "Miss what?"

She pants and arcs her hip as high off the bed as she can at the moment, nudging at his cheek. Demanding things, though she's really in no position.

_No position at all._

The thought makes him grin. It makes him want to work his way up back her body. All the way up to the tips of her fingers. A kiss for each. A hint of tongue and teeth as they twist and curl high above her head.

He lets out a sigh of adoration. Her hands are a thing of beauty. Strong, elegant fingers that fan out like blossoms, stems gathered tightly to a single point—midnight blue knot at her wrists.

_No position_, he thinks again as he turns his attention back to the expanse of perfect thigh right under his nose. Back to the story of her.

"This." He smudges a kiss over it. Ink darkening the skin. A smooth series of fine lines, expertly rendered in a space a little larger than a couple of postage stamps. "How did I miss this? I've been looking."

She shivers, recovering a little as his mouth turns gentle. As insistence turns to curiosity and all his attention is focused on a single point.

"When would you have even _seen_ it?" She tips her chin down to look at him. "Until lately."

She flutters her lashes and pitches her voice low. She's going for sultry. Seductive, and God knows it is—every single thing she says or does is seductive—but the little flash of teeth spoils the effect. That positively girlish grin she gives him. The one that has him falling harder and faster than ever, because she's happy. Because he's happy, and this is _fun. _Because they're so very good together.

He closes his teeth at one corner. That's not so delicate. She yelps. She draws air sharp between her teeth.

"Seedy kitchen," he says, once he's sure he has her attention again. He drags the pad of his thumb over the purple mark already forming. There's another brush of lips that's something like an apology, though she doesn't seem to expect one. She doesn't seem to mind. "Russian poker house."

She laughs, remembering. Calling up the vision of him over her shoulder, slack jawed as his heavy gaze traveled up and down the backs of her bare thighs. The practically audible blink as he finally registered her demand for back up. She wriggles and stretches in pleasant recollection. "You didn't even know about it then."

"No." He draws the syllable out. Accompaniment to the slow drag of his palm down from the flare of her hip to the point on her thigh where the hem of the sweater fell. It's a short trip and he fights down a surge of want at the memory of it creeping higher and higher as she bent at the waist and pressed up on her toes to flatten herself over the bulk of the mobster's back. "But I spent a lot of time remembering, Yekaterina. I have total recall." He trails his cheek upward and sweeps kisses all along the crease of her thigh.

"Apparently not." She rolls her eyes, but her breath catches. He hears it. She can feel the smug smile curving the lips currently driving her insane.

"And then there was LA." His fingers walk upward from her hip and all along her side, skipping over places now and then like he's honoring the memory of the laddered fabric of her suit.

Their eyes meet and want tugs sharply at them both. It's one of their more electric memories. Drops of water clinging to her skin and the outline of her palm darkening the fabric of his shirt just over his heart.

_Poke you? I want to _kiss_ you! _

He slithers up her body, lightning quick. He sinks one hand into her hair and tips her chin up. He kisses her, thorough and intent. A soft glide of his lips over hers, then hungry nips with teeth and tongue. Exploration, like he's making up for lost time.

"How could I have missed a thing?"

* * *

><p>"Tell me about him."<p>

It's a long while later. Her skin sticks to his. Sweat trickles over her hip and down across her belly to pool in the crease of her thigh where it's hiked up and over his. She's sated. She doesn't know whether it's dark or light. She doesn't know what _day _it is anymore. She doesn't know how he has the energy to even wonder.

"What makes you think there was a 'him'?" She slides her hand over his heated skin and slips her fingers between his where they're tracing the outline of it for the hundredth time.

He pulls back. He cocks his head to the side like something's just struck him. "A her?"

She wants to laugh. It's her first instinct—to take it as an adolescent leer, and there's something of that in it. Now, anyway. A little after the fact, as though he expects _her_ to expect it. But his palm is spread wide and his eyes roam her body. It's more than that. Far more. He wants to know her, and her insides flutter. Anticipation, because she _knows _him—he knows her, and they've been in love for what feels like forever—but this is new. All the stories they've yet to share, and she wonders about _him_. She wants to know.

"A him," she says quietly as she tips her head up to kiss him.

"Tell me," he says again.

It's eager. Thrilled and curious and hungry and . . . shy. Her heart swells and she wants to wrap him up. They've been tangled together in his sheets—in her sheets and no sheets at all for days on end at this point—and, still, he's genuinely shy about it.

She thinks about the last time. The day she let it drop, mostly to get his goat.

_Wow. I remember that phase. It__'__s about when I got my tattoo._

She thinks about that night at the Old Haunt. The way he'd hounded her at first. Quiet, in-her-ear guesses as he tried to catch her off guard. As he tried to see just how far scotch with a five-figure price tag might get him, but more than that, even then. Testing the waters between them, too. Inching closer the way they did all that year like it was safe. Like Gina and Josh—the fact of them—made any difference at all to what they were to one another. To what they were always on their way to being.

"There isn't much." He tenses a little. She feels his skin grow warm. A blush, because he's shy, and he thinks he overstepped. She tugs his palm up to her lips. She strings a chain of kisses across the heel of his hand, then brings it slowly, deliberately back down to rest on her thigh. She lays her own over it. "Really. Not much to tell."

He nods. Falls quiet, like he's determined to leave it at that. He can't, though. He can't.

"It's art." He flips his wrist to take her fingers in his. To lay the skin bare again. He glances up at her. Shy, yes, but teasing, too. Needling. "It's none of your usual 18-year-old suspects. It's not barbed wire or bad kanji that definitely doesn't mean what you think it means. It's not a dolphin or . . . it's not a _face,_ is it?" He scowls. Drops her fingers and hooks her thigh higher for a closer look.

"It's not a face." She ducks into his line of sight. "It's . . . it was just something he drew. I asked him what it meant and he . . . " She trails off. It's her skin warming now. _God _she hated being eighteen. She rolls her eyes. "He said _I__'__d _know what it meant when I was ready."

He tries valiantly not to laugh. He fails. Miserably. More miserably by the second until she's pummeling his chest with her fists and the tears are streaming down his face.

"I'm sorry," he gasps, finally. He catches her wrists and lavishes her hands with delicate kisses. Knuckles and palm and one for each fingertip. But the laughter bubbles up again. "I am. I'm sorry. I'm not . . . " He turns solemn, just like that. He kisses her lips. "I'm not making fun."

She pulls her hand away. She slides it—quick, quick, quick—down his chest to his abdomen, and he gasps. He doesn't know what to expect. What kind of torture, and she lets him twist a moment. She savors the in and out of shallow breath and his muscles twitching for just a moment before she flutters her fingers a little, not quite tickling. "Except you _are_."

"I _was_." He reaches for her hand again. He knots it with is own and settles both under his chin. "Sorry."

He _is_ sorry. A little worried that he's pushed too far. A little worried this will be another retreat on her part, and she doesn't want that.

"He was an ass." She closes her eyes. She turns her face a little further into the pillow, because this is hard. It's too hard with him looking at her like that. "A total ass, but I . . ." She freezes up. She doesn't mean to, but it's her mother. It's always her mother, but not like this usually.

He waits. He's still and quiet. He doesn't shift or toy with her fingers. He doesn't press or do anything but hold her close. He's so _patient_ with her, and she can't even believe the word sits next to his name in her mind, but he _is. _Three months, when she left him. A year since the words spilled out and she met them with silence. Two years. Four years, and here he is, still waiting, and here she is, still trying to be more.

"My parents were great." It spills out. It sounds strange enough that she's not surprised when her eyes flick open and he's biting his lip. He's trying not to laugh.

"You sound . . . annoyed by that," he says finally, and his eyes are sparkling.

"I was. My dad . . . he did the usual stupid stuff. He'd try to ground me. Tell me who I could and couldn't hang out with, but my mom . . ." the word catches in her throat. He spreads the palm at her shoulder blade wider. He soothes her and waits for her to go on. "She was so fucking _sensible_. She'd let me do stupid things and pick me up when I fell. She'd bail me out at school, and it was like . . . she was always a little proud when she'd push and I'd push back. And I . . . that year . . . I"

She's out of words, and it's frustrating, but he's there with them. He's always there.

"Hard to rebel."

That's it exactly. She presses a kiss to his shoulder. A smile. That's it exactly, and she's grateful to him for knowing it.

"He was the only guy she ever hated." It's true. She's known that for a long time, and she thinks of her mother's pressed lips and dark eyes. She thinks of her own coldness. The door slamming behind her as she sashayed into the hall with her leather jacket thrown over her shoulder.

"He was awful to me." That's true, too, but it's not quite the same. It's realization, right here in the gold of this moment. In the arms of this man who loves her so fiercely and completely. It's sudden realization _why _her mother hated him, that boy whose name she hardly remembers. Sudden realization why it's the only time she really remembers her mother being worse than angry. Being disappointed.

It's awful. It's humiliating. It makes her want to cover up and run.

It should, but she's tangled up with him and it's the thing of a moment. The hot flush and sinking stomach. The shame of it and the ache, because she can't tell her mom she's sorry. She can't tell her that she was right. It's all nothing but one painful moment, because her palm fits into Castle's and the way her toes dangle and brush the back of his thigh is perfect. Because it was so long ago and it's farther away from her—from who she is right now—than years can tell.

She looks up at him, smiling. It's all she has to say, really, but he looks thoughtful. Far away. She knocks the knot of their fingers against his jaw. She calls him back. He blinks down at her. He hesitates, and she doesn't know whether she wants him to go on or not. She's a little worn out with as much as she's already admitted, but she meets his gaze steadily.

He sees it. His eyes lock on hers and he gives the smallest nod, like he's relieved and proud and half a dozen other things, but still the words come slowly. Still, he's wondering and she doesn't know how he has the energy. "You kept it."

"I kept it." She turns it over in her own mind. _Of course,_ she thinks. It's obvious to her why _not _keeping it was never an option. She thinks it must be obvious to him, too. He knows her, and it has to be obvious, but he's asking. He's _asking_ and this is good. A habit they need to get into—saying things right out loud. "It seemed . . . fair?" Her eyes dart to his and he's just as puzzled. She tries again. "Smart. Necessary."

"A cautionary tale?" He works his fingers free of hers and runs his thumb over it again, like he can know it by touch. Like there are answers like ink just beneath the surface.

"A reminder," she says instead. "Self-inflicted wounds."

"No," he says sharply. His hand closes around her wrist. He tugs it away from her chest. From the round, puckered, ugly thing just left of center. She didn't even know—hadn't even realized that her own fingers had drifted thoughtlessly to it. Reflexively. "Kate. That is _not _. . . "

"It's not." She splays her hand against his cheek. She kisses him. Soothes him and brings him back to rest. "But this is." She winces as she arcs her shoulder forward and brushes his finger over the angry scrape that's just starting to heal. "And this." She hardly has to guide him at all as his palm skims down to circle the blue-green splash that covers her whole hip and fans out over her lower back.

"This." He dips his head. He covers a mark just north of her collarbone with a grin.

"I believe that one's _Castle _inflicted." She grins back, but he pulls away from her.

"They all are." He hides his face and she feels the grief rising from him. The panic, though it's been days and days and days. "Just as much . . . I shouldn't have left you. I shouldn't have . . ."

"Castle, don't." She presses her thumb under his chin and dips her mouth to kiss him. "It's so long ago."

It's a silly thing to say, whether or not she knows if it's day or night. Whether or not she knows how long they've been tangled up like this. The twinge of muscle and the ache in her bones reminds her this is new. It's all new.

It's a silly thing to say, but it's right, somehow.

"So long," he echoes. "So long ago."

She eases closer to him and shivers under his touch. Under his mouth and breath and gentle fingers as he visits and revisits all the places on her that are tender and sore from everything, good and bad both.

She eases closer.

* * *

><p>AN: Thanks for reading.


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